This is just a drill. Again.
As I write this post, I’m sitting in my parked car outside the kids’ school, seething. I’m so mad. The kind of mad that makes you shake and cry, which I’m actually doing, and have been doing, for about 24 hours now. I should be monitoring 1st and 2nd graders during their morning recess (I'm also a teacher at the kids’ school). And yet I sit here. I should be preparing for my first class, teaching sweet little first graders how to knit. But I’m not, because that class has been cancelled.
Today is our annual lockdown drill. It has become normal for our kids. Let me repeat myself: it has become NORMAL. I’m not sure if I’m just projecting my adult awareness on this “exercise”, and the kids actually don’t fully grasp what it all means? Or worse, they DO, and they’re ok with it. Because if they do understand the magnitude of what it means, then good god, what are we doing to our children? How does a lockdown drill (something our school boards and and other elected officials tell us is meant to empower them with the knowledge to protect themselves) change them? What are we teaching them about their world? I don’t think it’s good.
I grew up in rural Maine. Everyone I knew owned a gun. We had guns in our house. My dad taught me to check if a gun was loaded, to shoot a gun, to clean a gun. He impressed on my brother and I what they are: machines built to kill. Because when you pick up a gun, and you load that gun, you are preparing it to do its job. He wanted us to have the knowledge, so that if we were ever in a situation where there was a gun, we would know how to handle it. Just because I respect them doesn’t mean I have to like them.
So, like my father did, I prepare my children. Not by choice, but because it may one day save their life. Only now I’m not preparing them to know what to do if they’re at a friends house and happen to find the family hunting rifle. I’m preparing them to run and hide for their life.
My kids know the script by heart now:
“When you hear the announcement over the loud speaker that there’s a lockdown, what’s the first thing you do?”
In unison: “Grab our emergency packs and get to a teacher right away.”
“And, god forbid, it’s not a drill….then what?”
Again, in unison: “Switch our phones to silent, and turn the alarms off on our pumps. We know, Mom.”
And then I pretend I’m searching for something in the kitchen cabinet while I try to clear the tears from my eyes. As if the thought of a gunman on their campus isn’t enough to break me, how about we add in the fact that these kids have Type 1 Diabetes, a life threatening medical condition, to it all? My kids are smart, capable kids. But in a situation like this, would they make sure they’re paying attention to how their blood sugars are feeling? When adrenaline is surging, would they know to make adjustments to their basal? Would they truly remember to silence their alarms so that the gunman isn’t drawn to their hiding spot? There are a million and two factors that could kill them in that moment, and only one of them is a gun.
And this is why we can’t opt our kids out of these drills. In an emergency, “grabbing their packs and making a beeline for the nearest adult” needs to be automatic.
So rather than have legislation actually DO SOMETHING about the situation, we stick all kinds of bandaids on the real issue, and we dress it up nice and pretty with words like “empowerment” and “confidence” and “constitutional rights”.
If you, like me, thinks something needs to be done, please reach out to your state officials. Click HERE to be directed to the NEA’s letter generator. And most importantly, please VOTE.
